This invention relates to an articularly mounted battery-powered walk-behind reel lawnmower, especially lawnmowers used in mowing golf course greens, tee areas, and the like where ultimate precision of mowing is required.
Lawnmowers, such as greensmowers, are known in the art and they commonly employ reel cutters which are used for mowing golf course greens. In mowing present-day greens, it is desired that the grass be cut to a uniform height throughout the entire green. Where the green itself is not completely planar, it is desired that the cutting reel follow the contour of the green even where it has undulations of rises and valleys within the mowing swath presented by the reel.
The present invention provides a lawnmower which is a walk-behind type having minimal impaction of the green; and has maximum maneuverability; and is battery powered to have a lack of operation noise; and is arranged to be traction driven while having the cutting reel movable up and down to conform to the undulations of the green. The use of battery power is in contrast to the use of a gasoline powered mower which is inherently noisy and which can drip petroleum onto the green. Also, with a battery there is no air pollution as there is with a gasoline engine.
Another advantage of the present lawnmower is with regard to the modern need of lower cutting heights in order to accommodate increased speeds of the rolling golf ball on the green. Thus the cutting reel must be able to follow the contours of the golf course green. Here there are a traction unit and a reel unit articularly connected together, and the reel unit pivots both fore-and-aft and side-to-side relative to the mowing direction to produce optimum grass cutting.
Still further, the present lawnmower improves upon the gasoline driven mowers which inherently require a mechanical drive connection from the engine to the cutting reel itself. That requires hardware, such as the engine, clutches, gear drives, and a flexible drive shaft, and that prior art tends to restrict the articulation of the reel unit relative to its traction unit which supports the engine. Additionally, in the battery powered lawnmower of this invention, the traction unit and the reel unit each have their own electric drive motors, both of which can be operator-adjustable in speed and thereby select and control the frequency of cut, or clip rate, performed by the reel. That too produces a superior cut of the green.
So, with this battery powered lawnmower, the heretofore mentioned problems are eliminated, and the battery itself can be shifted in its position on the mower to achieve optimum balance for the assembled lawnmower. The reel unit can be easily removed from the traction unit for maintenance and to attach other units to the traction unit.
Further areas of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description provided hereinafter. It should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating the preferred embodiment of the invention, are intended for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.